


in a burning room

by autoclaves



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: (more angst ngl), Canon Compliant, Character Study, Episode: s10e12 The Doctor Falls, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Missing Scene, major character death warning is for a regeneration/implied death scene, they slow dance in the vault. that's it, touch-starved missy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:01:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23102905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/autoclaves/pseuds/autoclaves
Summary: “Do you remember when we did this, Missy?” the Doctor says. He isn’t looking at her, only continuing to cradle her animal-soft with the cupped palms of his hands. “On Gallifrey, before.”Before the war, she knows he means. Before you started burning stars instead of saving them, thinking we could dance amidst the ruins.“I remember.” It sounds like a confession. It sounds like absolution. Gallifrey—the Doctor says it like he’s trying to sanctify the name with a single exhale. Like he’s trying to remember how it shaped his tongue that first time, with its fields that went on forever, its sea turned silver at night like thousands of coins on top of each other, the night sky softened between its two bronze-yellow moons.
Relationships: The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Twelfth Doctor/Missy
Comments: 4
Kudos: 35





	in a burning room

**Author's Note:**

> i just completely fucking bombed a scholarship interview and i'm v upset so this isn't edited as well as it should be but oh well!
> 
> this was supposed to be a sequel to [collision course](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23059654),,,,,,, i swear it was supposed to be a twissy version of collision course and i even had concepts for it and everything but then missy wanted to slow dance so like. i just left it at that.
> 
> title is from john mayer's song! in my drafts this was called something like "the master can have a little reciprocated love....... as a treat" so draw what conclusions you will from that.

“C’mon, then,” she says, jerking her head at the Doctor, who is standing on the other side of the room with his dark coat and jaded eyes. “Just—just. Come here.”

“Missy…” he says. It sounds like a confession. It sounds like absolution. He gravitates towards her anyway. 

“No need to make a big deal of it,” she murmurs when they’re close enough, the distance narrowed to a scant few inches between the folds of their clothes.

“No,” he agrees. She’s shorter than him in this incarnation, even in heeled boots, and the difference lets her tip her head into the space between his throat and shoulder. (He’s warm. She can feel his heartbeat thrumming beneath the papery thinness of his skin, a double pulse slow with blueshift. It’s steady, unfaltering. She’d almost believe that it could outlast the world, this world, but she’d thought that last time too. And the time before that, and the time before, and—)

He finally puts his arms around her. The air hums; illusions itself with the quietest tenderness. She tilts herself forward, the points of contact between them a warm pressure. She catalogues them one by one—his hands, fingers splayed on her shoulderblades, her head resting on his collarbone, the length of his forearm against her sides. Her left hand on his chest and her right hand at his back. Just the tips of their shoes touching.

The Doctor shuffles his feet, turning them both around in a slow circle. Missy holds back a laugh, unexpectedly. She hasn’t laughed in a long time.

“Do you remember when we did this, Missy?” the Doctor says. He isn’t looking at her, only continuing to cradle her animal-soft with the cupped palms of his hands. “On Gallifrey, before.”

Before the war, she knows he means. Before you started burning stars instead of saving them, thinking we could dance amidst the ruins. 

“I remember.” It sounds like a confession. It sounds like absolution. Gallifrey—the Doctor says it like he’s trying to sanctify the name with a single exhale. Like he’s trying to remember how it shaped his tongue that first time, with its fields that went on forever, its sea turned silver at night like thousands of coins on top of each other, the night sky softened between its two bronze-yellow moons. 

(The Doctor lives for the past, she thinks. Oh, certainly, he runs away from it, and towards the future, but running from the past is just another way of having to live by it.)

Missy isn’t heartless. Never to him, not if it’s him at stake. She remembers, too.

“It was our first life. We went to the top of the Citadel watchtowers, as high as we could, and we danced. And you pointed out the stars. You told me stories about them. I remember, Doctor.”

“I always liked astrophysics more than you did.”

Tears are slipping from her eyes, unbidden. If he feels them, drops spotting the fabric of his shirt, he doesn’t say anything. They sway around the room and the air is thick with clotted silence. 

“But not more than you liked me,” she says finally. “Because then you stopped looking at the stars and I kissed you and you didn’t run.”

“I kissed you back.”

She can’t tell what he’s thinking as he says that. ( _ Never trust a hug. It’s just a way to hide your face _ . She’d told him that once, at the Academy. And now here they are, lightyears away from Gallifrey, slow-dancing with their faces turned away from each other. The strangest honor code, just between the two of them.)

On an impulse, she puts her hands on his cheeks and turns it as gently as she knows how so that he has to look at her. He closes his eyes under her touch, the bare softness of it, and remains absolutely still. She can see the sharp flickering movements under his eyelids. “Tell me to stop.” 

“No.” The reply is abrupt, almost pulled out of him too quickly.

“Tell me to stop, Doctor.” It’s a demand this time. (He’s spent entire lives rejecting her. Why should this be any different?)

He doesn’t move. When she presses a kiss to his mouth, slow with leftovered history, he leans into it. His hand drifts over her shoulders, migrates to her waist like he doesn’t know where to put it yet. An indeterminable amount of heartbeats pass.

Missy pulls back first, and steps away bodily. 

“I’m not good. I’m not  _ good, _ Doctor, not like your companions or your wife or those people on the planets you save because you decide they’re worthy of your compassion. I  _ can’t _ be.” 

“You were kind, when we were children,” he says softly. 

Missy shakes her head. “Too many things between then and now.”

“The law of conservation of matter—we are not created or destroyed. You still know how to be kind. Not good, maybe. But kind.” He puts a hand on her heart. The left one, like he would to a human.

(She’s kind to him, and by extension, cruel to all others.) 

“I think…” she takes a breath. Her chest rises and falls against the press of his palm. “I think we should dance again.”

He nods. Wordlessly, he shifts into her space again and so they slow-dance on the spot, faces safely tucked away over shoulders and into collars.

_ (an unnamed colony ship; a thousand experienced instances of kindnesses later; _

_ without hope, without witness, without reward) _

She won’t regenerate. She already knows this, and she can see, clear as anything, that he is not bluffing in the slightest. The Master does not bluff—no, that was always more the Doctor’s area of expertise. But just in case. Just in case (and oh, what has the Doctor done to her—silly old man, letting her have hope), she looks at the trees high above her as she feels the dark creeping into the peripheries of her vision. “Mistress,” she gasps out. “Not me, the new one. Mistress. I won’t tell you—to be good.” The pain travels up her spine, lightning-quick, hitching her breath in the middle of the sentence. “You don’t have to be good. That’s for him. He’s good enough for both of us.” She clutches at the ground. One side is going numb entirely; her right heart is always the first to stop, as if it knows not to delay the inevitable. The left side is the one that the Doctor had put his hand on so many years ago. Maybe all of her that’s good is in that single heart, pumping and pumping in a futile attempt at faith. “But maybe, just maybe. Listen to what he says, once in a while. Kind is different from—” her hand spasms. She will never admit that in this moment before her imminent death she wishes for the Doctor to come. “—from good. Be kind.”

Another splintering jolt of pain, and she hits the ground hard on her knees. It’s over. 

“Mistress,” she says. “I let you go.”

**Author's Note:**

> i tried to make this clear in the text but there's definitely some offscreen Time And Character Development separating the last snippet from the rest of the fic. i didn't want to write how exactly missy went from rejecting the idea of kindness outright to her regeneration speech because that's a whole different fic, but that scene was the first thing i wrote for this fic and i can't seem to let go of it.
> 
> there's one line in here that's a play on hozier's quote: "i love you, and by extension, i hate all other things", and the "i let you go" part is ofc from twelve's last episode that i thought would be a lovely parallel.
> 
> tumblr: @doctortwelfth


End file.
